


limn

by nimic



Category: AR∀GO ロンドン市警特殊犯罪捜査官 | Arago
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Gen, nonlinear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25028944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimic/pseuds/nimic
Summary: The one where you come back (?) changed(teen rating for some brief unsettling descriptions that may count as mild gore for those who are squeamish)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	limn

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to my darling mags (beeberry) for beta reading this!! y_y<3

Arago vaguely remembered being normal. It was like thinking back to a dream, he remembered that things happened, that he acted and reacted in certain ways that made sense at the time, but it was foggy, intangible. He couldn’t relate to it anymore. Like watching a movie or another person’s life through their eyes. 

Arago now was Arago always. 

He was stuck. A single flickering star in the sky.

He didn’t have Brionac yet, he was four, of course he didn’t have Brionac. But he also did. Somewhere deeper than words and bodies went, he had Brionac. Arago would sneak out at night to stare at the stars that felt like him, here and there, now and then and later, all at once. He’d let the knowledge that he had Brionac wash over him like a gentle breeze, blowing away doubts.

He’d blink up, burn the image of the stars into his eyes so they could follow him through his days. 

He wasn’t worried about Ewan living past their encounter with Patchman in fifteen or so years. He wasn’t worried about his parents. 

It was strange. He was sure he cared about them — but it didn’t feel like it did in his dreams. It didn’t fill him with an anxious fear, it didn’t bring a dazzling grin to his face. Things were dull, but they were also so, so _clear._

It didn’t matter, in the end. Because Arago was Arago always. Those feelings were him even if both he and they were different now. And his parents would live. This time (all times) he knew. There were futures out there where his parents died, and he’d lived second by excruciating second through one, once; but this was not that future, not that present, not that branch of possible life.

Patchman came to them, as he was always meant to. Their house was in flames again, like last time, like all the times. The Hunts were crouched in front of their children to protect them from the towering, cackling man draped in rags that wouldn’t catch fire. Arago touched his brother’s shoulder gently, met his terrified and confused eyes with a small smile of his own. He went forward to part his parents and step between them.

“I know you,” he said.

A cackle that matched the crackle of the flames. “Do you now, boy?”

Arago couldn’t help but smile. “I won’t burn, you know. Ever. But it’s too late for that to mean anything.”

He wouldn’t notice the way his parents tried to move forward to grab him, hide him behind them again. The way their brows furrowed at his words. But it never really mattered how they would act in this moment. They would love him regardless; they would ask, in a few years. They asked him now, in a few years, and he answered with a smile that looked too old for his fourteen year old face, too young for the centuries he’d already always lived. His parents would never really need an answer because Arago himself was always the answer. Arago now and always.

“In another time, another place, you found your dream here.”

“Dream?” Patchman answered, grin faltering, before coming back in full force. “You don’t burn, you said?”

“That’s right. I never burn.”

“Come then, show me.”

And the distance between Arago and Patchman disappeared, as it had, as it always would, for this moment. He put his hand out for Patchman to take, ignored the sharp intake of breath and the beginnings of his name from his parents’ lips. Patchman reached out, grabbed his wrist, Ewan threw himself against his parents to get to his brother, Arago’s name coming from his lips in a strangled sound.

“HA! So you don’t burn!”

Arago smiled. Expression contained in a way it never would have been in a past life.

“No, but you do. And this will be the last time.”

“That it will!” Patchman cheered.

“That it will,” Arago echoed.

Then Brionac bled into him, where it already was, where it would continue to be for years and years and then centuries and centuries. It touched the part of itself that existed _beyond,_ that was now, had always been, and would continue to be a part of Arago. It melted into the 5 year old body in a feeling not unlike that of alcohol gradually warming you up from the inside, that Arago remembered from days fifteen years in the future, in the present.

“ _What-_ what are you _doing,_ ” Patchman ground out, throwing Arago’s arm away from himself.

“I told you, this is the last time.”

“ _What are you doing!?”_ he demanded. 

“This was never meant for you. You know that, don’t you? You wouldn’t have burned, if it was. But that’s fine. It’s over now. Don’t worry, you don’t have to burn anymore.”

“No- _no._ Give it back! Give it- _Undo this, damn you!”_

“You’ll never burn again. This is the last time, Alexander.”

“How do you-” Patchman’s knees met the creaking hardwood floors with a dull thud. Trembles wracked his body, his hands reached up to his chest, ripping at the bandages, exposing mangled decaying flesh. “What have you done, _what have you done._ ”

Arago stepped forward again, running a hand beneath Patchman’s hood in a motion not unlike a parent patting their child’s head. “Shh, it’s OK now, it’s all over.”

“ _No no no no no-”_

He snaked his fingers beneath the bandages there, where Rupert’s head was slowly being burned through. “Goodbye, Alex,” Arago whispered, unheard through the sound of crackling fire and wood. Unheard behind Patchman’s roaring scream.

Human bodies don’t burn completely, not in fires like this. But Brionac wasn’t a normal fire, so Patchman’s skin cracked and darkened. It folded in on itself like a burning page, disintegrated. It went on until the bones were all that were left, and then those crumbled as well. Arago stood and watched, a witness to the end of a life that was never meant to get this far, to the end of suffering that many had never deserved. And when all that was left of that old story was a pile of damp clothes that struggled to burn, Arago finally turned to his family.

“We should go,” he said. Like a man (a monster, perhaps) hadn’t just tried to kill them, and died for it.

It was enough to knock his parents into movement, though, and move they did. His mother picked Ewan up, then himself. His father hesitated over the scraps of clothes left on the ground. The only proof of the intruder, Arago knew he was thinking, but then his father shook his head, turned towards his wife and children, and ushered them out with an eye on the ceiling for possible collapses.

The story was in the news shorter than it had been in Arago’s previous life, if he was remembering correctly. Not that it mattered of course. The disappearance of Patchman wouldn’t matter either. Didn’t really matter. Perhaps it mattered to people like Joe, who were waiting desperately for the closure, but this was another one of those _always_ things for Arago, so it didn’t matter.

Rio moved, the twins went to school, graduated, went to another school. 

Rio would come back, eventually, a cop again, always. Her sense of justice never one to bend to silly things like one less madman, one different friend.

Ewan would go on to become a professor, a researcher. Someone who knew history and theology and mythology inside out. He’d pursued knowledge in the effort to understand what had happened that night. He would meet Joe again, and Coco. And through him they would meet Arago. 

Arago would become a painter, strangely enough. It was something the stars, the powers that were _other_ , couldn’t begrudge him. He painted the world in the auras he saw. The few who understood would appreciate his works in their own way; those who couldn’t see like they did would appreciate the abstract innovation, or some such.

Arago painted portraits for those he loved, for people he met on the street and who were drawn to him just enough to offer their contact information. Though Arago could always see himself delivering the portraits, so he didn’t technically need the information. It just made things less awkward.

He painted, eventually, two portraits. One for Patchman, and one for Alexander. Patchman’s was colors that clashed, that muddied, that made you feel sick and sad all at once. There was the speck of light that was Brionac, hidden behind layers of wrong, disgusting colors, glowing a sickly bright color as it twisted Alexander’s aura into Patchman’s. Alexander’s was vastly the same colors, but softer. The colors weren’t muddied, they sat side by side in a way that avoided clashes, and the distinct brightness of Brionac was never there. They sat in Arago’s studio, and would continue to sit there until Arago decided to go on a trip to where Patchman was born.

Arago painted portraits for the fae, when he met them.

“Will you sign it for me?” some would ask, jokingly, but also not. 

Arago would smile back.

“Even if I did, you know this name doesn’t mean much anymore, right?”

“Won’t you sign it with your real name?” some would answer.

“You know I can’t write that one,” he’d grin back.

Arago painted portraits for the horsemen, too. He’d painted them at the start, actually. When he’d first decided that a paintbrush was better than a camera or a pencil or watercolors. (He always knew he’d end up with the brush, but it was nice to experiment anyway.) The paintings were a reminder he didn’t actually need, until their times came. And in those moments where they had previously been tempted by Patchman, it was Arago who showed up. Who held out his hand, and led them to better places, better people. He held their hands as they filed reports, as they decided on doctors to see, on people to reach out to. They each lived with him for a time, as they settled into new lives.

Their paintings were in the rooms Arago set up for them, and eventually they asked. 

“That’s you,” Arago would answer. 

He often got confusion in return. “But it’s so…” _bright,_ they wouldn’t say. 

And Arago would smile back, touch their shoulder, if they didn’t mind.

“I know,” he would say.

One day it would be them. It was them before, it was them now, it would be them again. And one day they would see it too.

Eventually, his friends and family grew older, and he remained. But Arago wouldn’t grieve. He’d lost them the day he was born, the day he came back. He’d lost them in another life, he was losing them now. But he had had them once, and he had them now, and he would have them forever more.

By that point no one needed to ask him — who or what he was, how he existed, what would happen to him now. By that point, by this point, they’d spent a lifetime with him, so they knew.

Arago would bid them farewell, one by one. And he’d see them again every day, every moment, just as he never saw them once they passed. And then he would continue now, as he continued always.

And he would paint.


End file.
